SCSU Forum to Mark 25th Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall

Posted by musantej1, Community Contributor

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 will be the topic of discussion at an SCSU forum on Nov. 10. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. State Department official who played a key role in the discussions about Berlin, will be the keynote speaker.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 will be the topic of discussion at an SCSU forum on Nov. 10. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. State Department official who played a key role in the discussions about Berlin, will be the keynote speaker. (Posted by musantej1, Community Contributor)

The program, "Remembering the Fall of the Berlin Wall: 25 Years Later," is free and open to the public, and will run from Noon to 2 p.m. in the Michael J. Adanti Student Center, Grand Ballroom.The wall's demolition on Nov. 9, 1989, marked one of the final moments of the Cold War. It had divided East and West Berlin for 28 years, as well as having been a tangible symbol of Soviet oppression of Eastern Europe.

Burns was involved in the discussions on Berlin and Germany before and during the time that the wall came down. In 1990, he was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the National Security Council, a post he would hold until 1995, effectively bridging the administrations of Bush and President Clinton. He would later serve as undersecretary of state for political affairs under President George W. Bush, the third highest post in the State Department. Today, he is a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Burns will discuss what the Bush Administration and the State Department were thinking during the lead-up to the fall, as well as how they addressed the situation before and after the wall came down.

A panel discussion will follow the keynote and is scheduled to include Troy Paddock, chairman of the SCSU History Department and an expert on German history; Kevin Buterbaugh, SCSU professor of political science and an international relations specialist; Stephen Breese, dean of the SCSU School of Arts & Sciences who lived in West Germany in 1989; and Eileen Kane, assistant professor of history at Connecticut College, where she specializes in modern Soviet/Russian history.

Video clips of major historical milestones pertaining to the fall will be shown. A question-and-answer period will follow the panel discussion.